10 Social Media Tips and Updates from May 2016

May saw various shifts among numerous social networks, plus some feedback on recent changes. Users are having mixed reactions to Facebook’s reactions and Twitter is flexing on its notorious 140-character count limit.

The social media world also saw new elements added (Periscope); breakups between partners (Reddit); and could Amazon’s new product possibly put a dent in YouTube’s video share?

Find out the scoop here:

Facebook

After years of the echoing cry for a “Dislike” button on Facebook, at the end of February, Facebook finally launched alternatives to the “Like”. While not a thumbs-down, per se, the new Facebook Reactions offer the ability for a user to respond to a post with a Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, or Angry emoticon. But how are these reactions integrating into the day-to-day of Facebook responses?

Facebook Reactions debuted as the ad tech industry looks more seriously at emotional analysis. Facebook still has to figure out how to get more users to react with its nuanced responses while the ad tech industry grapples with creating more sophisticated behavior modeling to help improve programmatic marketing.

For the more than 1.6 billion active monthly users on Facebook, scrolling through the feed and catching up with the latest news is easy enough. But for the social media managers and marketers managing successful Facebook pages, there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes. Here are 11 hidden Facebook marketing features for social media managers and marketers to try!

Facebook Live, the social network’s live broadcasting feature, is certainly generating lots of buzz lately. And that’s perhaps in part because it is reportedly one of the platform’s highest priority initiatives—and even a pet project of Mark Zuckerberg himself.

Periscope

Twitter’s live streaming app Periscope debuted new search functionality, permanent videos, and a partnership with popular drone maker DJI. Periscope’s introduction of search is news on its own because the app never before had full search functionality. While you’ll still have the option to set a time limit on your videos, all broadcasts will now be saved permanently, too, by default.

Snapchat

If you’re just getting started on Snapchat as a brand, it’s important to not only produce content for your public story, which can be seen by any user who adds you (the equivalent of following someone on Twitter or Instagram), but to also find users to connect with.

Twitter

Twitter will no longer count images and URLs in its character limit. @names will also not be included in the character count. You also don’t have to add a period before usernames for them to be seen in followers’ feeds.

YouTube

Amazon introduced a new called Amazon Video Direct that allows people to post videos for which there are various ways for publishers to earn money with their videos. Amazon poses a threat to Google’s YouTube is in the payouts: Amazon Direct Video is allowing content creators to keep 50% of revenue generated from their videos.